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Speaker 2: The fried egg requires a different technique. What you need
Speaker 2: to do is actually square the face so it'll dig
Speaker 2: down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right out.
Speaker 3: Onto the green here's the take.
Speaker 2: Plat of a buried lion of bunker is completely different
Speaker 2: than playing out of a nice clean lion a greenside bunker.
Speaker 2: You need to be aggressive on any shop weather. It's
Speaker 2: sitting cleanly for its Friday Egg.
Speaker 3: Well, we've all faced it, regretted Frida egg.
Speaker 1: It's not to be feared, though.
Speaker 3: It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.
Speaker 4: When we think about Harding Park's demise, it's one thing
Speaker 4: to look out and of course you love and see
Speaker 4: dried out fairways and greens with daisies on them and
Speaker 4: bunkers with no sand in them. That's one thing. It's
Speaker 4: another to see your golf course turned into a parking lot.
Speaker 4: I'm bo Linx. I am a lawyer by training. I
Speaker 4: practiced law for over forty five years in San Francisco.
Speaker 4: I've played golf for almost sixty years in San f Cisco,
Speaker 4: largely on public courses, and I've always been someone who
Speaker 4: saw great beauty in these golf courses and had so
Speaker 4: many great memories playing them. I was convinced that people
Speaker 4: had to stand up to preserve them. I've always been
Speaker 4: motivated by a phrase that I heard from Ken Venturi,
Speaker 4: where he said, without public golf, the game withers and dies.
Speaker 4: And when they held the nineteen ninety eight US Open
Speaker 4: at the Olympic Club, which is just across Lake Marsad
Speaker 4: from Harding, they needed a place to park the cars,
Speaker 4: and somebody in their infinite wisdom decided that Harding Park
Speaker 4: was perfect for that job, and so Harding Park, this
Speaker 4: great municipal masterpiece, was transformed into a parking lot. For me,
Speaker 4: that might have been the low point.
Speaker 1: This is Frida Egg Stories. I'm Garrett Morrison. In this
Speaker 1: episode we tell the story of Harding Park golf course,
Speaker 1: of how it went from the pride of San Francisco
Speaker 1: to a parking lot and now this week to the
Speaker 1: venue of the twenty twenty PGA Championship. But bigger picture,
Speaker 1: this is a story about city golf. When Harding Park
Speaker 1: was built, municipal golf courses were symbols of civic vitality,
Speaker 1: of affordable recreation for the masses. As public works went,
Speaker 1: they were popular and relatively uncontroversial. Things are very different today.
Speaker 1: Most municipal courses have become casualties of budget cuts or
Speaker 1: drains on local governments, or lightning rots for debates about
Speaker 1: land use. Harding Park at different times has been all
Speaker 1: of those things. It's been the best and the worst
Speaker 1: of city golf and everything in between. With the PGA
Speaker 1: Championship approaching, I wanted to through all of this. So
Speaker 1: last week I sat down with bow Lynx. You're a
Speaker 1: San Francisco guy.
Speaker 4: San Francisco native, grew up in the Richmond District. Used
Speaker 4: to put my clubs on my back and walk up
Speaker 4: to Lincoln Park to meet an old friend of mine
Speaker 4: named John Susco to play golf, where we'd cut intot
Speaker 4: the seventh hole and start playing. And we knew that
Speaker 4: Lincoln was a little bit of a course, always very scenic,
Speaker 4: but sort of the place where beginners went to start
Speaker 4: out and learn the game, and when you kind of
Speaker 4: graduated to the next level, you went over to Harding,
Speaker 4: which was the big course that was the championship course,
Speaker 4: And I can remember the first time I went over there,
Speaker 4: after waiting the three four hours to play, getting out
Speaker 4: on the golf course and some of the undulations in
Speaker 4: the course. We'd get to holes and I would look
Speaker 4: up at the green and I turned to the guys
Speaker 4: I'm playing with. Is that flag in front of the
Speaker 4: bunker or behind the bunker? You couldn't tell because it
Speaker 4: was like tricking your eye. And there was this utter
Speaker 4: fascination with seeing things like that that made you want
Speaker 4: to go out play the course and learn it and
Speaker 4: then come back and play it once you had learned it.
Speaker 1: By the time both started playing Harding Park in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties, public golf in the city already had
Speaker 1: a long history.
Speaker 4: San Francisco was one of the early adapters to urban golf.
Speaker 4: By nineteen oh two, there was a little three hole
Speaker 4: course out where Lincoln Park is, in an area that
Speaker 4: was largely a graveyard, but there was three holes and
Speaker 4: people played it, and by nineteen seventeen had finally expanded
Speaker 4: to eighteen holes. But there was a problem. More people
Speaker 4: wanted to play the golf course than they had room
Speaker 4: for and so they decided to build a new municipal
Speaker 4: links on the shore of Lake Mercet And in nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty two the Recreation and Park Department hired Willie Watson,
Speaker 4: who had worked on the courses at the Olympic Club,
Speaker 4: to design and supervise construction for a new course at
Speaker 4: Harding Park. What became Harding Park, But what you have
Speaker 4: to put in context historically in terms of the era
Speaker 4: at what it was like. San Francisco burned the ground
Speaker 4: in nineteen oh six after a devastating earthquake, and yet
Speaker 4: within nine years the city was rebuilt to the point
Speaker 4: where it held the World's Fair in nineteen fifteen, and
Speaker 4: then ten years after that we had Harding Park. And
Speaker 4: Harding Park wasn't the only construction project on the books.
Speaker 4: They rebuilt City Hall, downtown San Francisco, the Opera House,
Speaker 4: the Symphony Hall, the public library, the museums, all kinds
Speaker 4: of things. And it was an era where people could
Speaker 4: get things done, and they did get them done. And
Speaker 4: most importantly, the quality of the craftsmanship that you see
Speaker 4: is just it's almost like it's the lost art, you know,
Speaker 4: the stonework that would work, the grandiose architecture. It's unbelievable,
Speaker 4: and it transformed the city from rubble into a majestic
Speaker 4: place that say world class city was then is now.
Speaker 4: These were government projects for the average person.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: Harding Park wasn't supposed to be a private country club.
Speaker 4: It wasn't a private country club. It was a public
Speaker 4: golf course played by ordinary people.
Speaker 6: I mean it was built in nineteen twenty five, so
Speaker 6: it's ninety five years old as it hosts a major
Speaker 6: for the first time. I'm Ron Kroutzcheck and I cover
Speaker 6: golf for the San Francisco Chronicle. But it was built
Speaker 6: in nineteen twenty five. Kind of a glorious era for
Speaker 6: golf course architecture. You know, think about all the courses.
Speaker 6: You know, the same architects who built Harding built Olympic
Speaker 6: Club right across the lake. And that was an era
Speaker 6: in the twenties and thirties when Alistair mackenzie was building
Speaker 6: tons of courses in northern California from Cyprus Point up
Speaker 6: to Meadow Club, and golf was really in an incredible,
Speaker 6: gross spurt and incredible period of architecture.
Speaker 1: If you talk to a knowledgeable San Francisco golfer like
Speaker 1: Ron krotzcheck about the original design of Harding Park, you'll
Speaker 1: probably hear a lot about how the course is routed.
Speaker 1: That is the path it takes through the property.
Speaker 6: You know, it starts out on the inside. All the
Speaker 6: first nine holes are all in the inner part of
Speaker 6: the course, and then the back nine kind of weaves
Speaker 6: around the perimeter. And as you go from ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
Speaker 6: thirteen green your first view of Lake Merced and then
Speaker 6: fourteen fifteen sixteen all the way down the strets is
Speaker 6: along the lake and it sort of builds in exhilaration
Speaker 6: I guess is probably the best word. And then eighteen
Speaker 6: is the shot over the neck of the lake, and it's.
Speaker 4: That kind of crescendo, if you will, where the music
Speaker 4: picks up, the tempo picks up. Great golf courses all
Speaker 4: have this sense of pace. It's like listening to a
Speaker 4: piece of music, except you get to walk through it.
Speaker 4: And it's a layout that from the day it opened
Speaker 4: to today has always produced great golf. It's produced exciting golf,
Speaker 4: and the people who have won there have been great golfers, and.
Speaker 6: It goes all the way back to future major champions
Speaker 6: like George Archer and Johnny Miller and Ken Venturrey and
Speaker 6: Bob Rosberg kind of San Francisco's Grand Slam right there.
Speaker 6: Growing up on the course, Ken Venturrey's father actually ran
Speaker 6: the pro shop for many years at Harding and Venturi
Speaker 6: played Harvey Ward, who was US Amateur champion, in the
Speaker 6: title match of the San Francisco City Championship in the
Speaker 6: fifties and there were ten thousand fans out there. It
Speaker 6: was front page news and the chronicle the next day,
Speaker 6: and that really added another layer of prestige to the course.
Speaker 1: With golf's popularity soaring. The city decided to make an
Speaker 1: addition to the facility.
Speaker 4: In the original layout for Harding, there was an interior
Speaker 4: gap in the architecture that was just if you will
Speaker 4: open pasture. They were practice holes. People used to go
Speaker 4: out and hit balls there. Ken Venturi's one of the
Speaker 4: great examples, Harvey Ward two. They'd go out there with
Speaker 4: their own balls and they'd beat them until dark. But
Speaker 4: here they had this area right inside Harding where they
Speaker 4: could put nine holes in for a short course. It
Speaker 4: was supervised by Jack Fleming, who was the golf superin
Speaker 4: Tenant in San Francisco. He was on Alistair Mackenzie's crew
Speaker 4: years ago, and they named it in his honor. They
Speaker 4: called it the Jack Fleming nine. And it was a
Speaker 4: damn good little golf course. Then there something else happened.
Speaker 4: In the nineteen sixties early sixties. They started playing the
Speaker 4: Lucky International, and that was where I first saw Arnold Palmer,
Speaker 4: and he was playing my golf course, and Jack Nicholas
Speaker 4: was playing my golf course, and so was Gary player In,
Speaker 4: George Archer and all those other great players. And to
Speaker 4: know that you could go out there on Saturday morning
Speaker 4: and play the same course that they played well, that
Speaker 4: took on a whole other meeting. You can't really describe
Speaker 4: that in words. It's a feeling you have in your heart.
Speaker 4: That's what makes places like Harding Park stick out so
Speaker 4: vividly in your memory. It's knowing that you played where
Speaker 4: they played.
Speaker 6: There was that pride among regular golfers, that this was
Speaker 6: a special place, that this was not just another public course,
Speaker 6: and that you know, as San Franciscans, they needed to
Speaker 6: protect that when that's what Harding sort of represented. I
Speaker 6: think golf's available to common players and common people. It's
Speaker 6: not an elitist It doesn't always have to be an
Speaker 6: elitist sport. You don't have to belong to a country
Speaker 6: club to have a good golf experience. And it was really,
Speaker 6: you know, a jewel of a municipal course then before
Speaker 6: it kind of fell into neglect.
Speaker 1: What happened to Harding Park in the seventies, eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: How do you explain that and what did you observe?
Speaker 4: Well, at some point, I think the city had enough
Speaker 4: people tugging on its budget with other needs, which are
Speaker 4: all legitimate needs. Money just got diverted and Harding Park
Speaker 4: got forgotten. And after that the course sadly fell into
Speaker 4: a very bad state of disrepair. And when I say bad,
Speaker 4: I mean really really bad. If you look at pictures
Speaker 4: of what happened, there were completely dried up fairways with
Speaker 4: huge fissures in them. It was almost like there was
Speaker 4: another earthquake that came along, but just the ground dried up.
Speaker 4: The clubhouse was run down. I mean there was open
Speaker 4: wiring everywhere, not behind walls. Things were taped to counters.
Speaker 4: There were no computers back then. It was a pretty
Speaker 4: broken down operation.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: It was so sad that this had happened to a
Speaker 4: golf course that was so great. And there came this
Speaker 4: movement that said, we've got a history here, We've got
Speaker 4: something that's been handed down to us. It's worth saving.
Speaker 4: And the one person with whom that message resonates more
Speaker 4: than anybody else was my friend Sandy Tatum. When I
Speaker 4: think of Sandy Tatum, I think of the most complete
Speaker 4: human being I've ever met. The pedigree looks like this.
Speaker 4: He went to Stanford. He won the NCAA individual golf championship,
Speaker 4: his team won the team championship. He was selected to
Speaker 4: be a Rhodes Scholar. He was educated then at Oxford
Speaker 4: and earned a degree there. He came back to the
Speaker 4: United States and became a lawyer. He became the president
Speaker 4: of the United States Golf Association. He played amateur golf
Speaker 4: competitively all his life. And when you spoke to Sandy,
Speaker 4: here's a man who spoken full sentences, not phrases. There
Speaker 4: were no catch words. It was a complete thought. And
Speaker 4: you might ask him a question and there might be
Speaker 4: a pause. That's because he was actually thinking of his answer.
Speaker 4: And when you got that answer, you drew back on.
Speaker 4: You said, this guy really knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: Do you have any specific memories of playing with him
Speaker 1: at Harding Park.
Speaker 4: I played a lot of rounds of go off with
Speaker 4: Sandy Tatum, but the most memorable was in the first
Speaker 4: t tournament that's held every year, and this one year
Speaker 4: he invited me to play with him and with Harris Barton,
Speaker 4: who's retired from the forty nine ers, And so they
Speaker 4: stick this young guy with us, young stockbroker, nice kids,
Speaker 4: about twenty three years old. We're going out, we're having
Speaker 4: a good time, and it starts to rain on about
Speaker 4: the seventh hole, and we're going up the ninth fairway,
Speaker 4: and Harris Barton leans over to me. He says, hey, bo,
Speaker 4: I think I'm gonna stop after nine holes. Could you
Speaker 4: ask Sandy if it's okay? And I said, Harris, you're
Speaker 4: an all pro offensive lineman. You ask Sandy if it's okay.
Speaker 4: And he didn't have the balls to do it. So
Speaker 4: I went up to Tatum and I said, you know,
Speaker 4: Harris is thinking to stop, and Sandy just you didn't
Speaker 4: get mad or he says, hell, if he wants to stop,
Speaker 4: let him stop. We're going to keep going, aren't we.
Speaker 4: I said, yeah, So Harris drops out. We go along.
Speaker 4: We played ten eleven and it's really coming down. I've
Speaker 4: got some rain gear, Sandy's got some rain gear, but
Speaker 4: this kid has nothing. And the kid is tripping wet.
Speaker 4: And so we get to the twelve hole and Sandy,
Speaker 4: at the age of you know, ninety, he can still
Speaker 4: crack the golf ball. It echoes off his club face
Speaker 4: still and he just smokes one out there and this
Speaker 4: kid kind of hits kind of weak fade to the
Speaker 4: right and we're looking for his ball in there, and
Speaker 4: I can see he's kind of dejected, and I say, Son,
Speaker 4: you're pretty wet. You've just been out hit by somebody
Speaker 4: who's about sixty five years older than you are. Why
Speaker 4: don't you go in? He takes off. Now it's me
Speaker 4: and Tatum and a caddy. We play two more holes
Speaker 4: and the sun comes out and Sandy pars the fourteenth hole,
Speaker 4: four hundred and seventy yard par four at the age
Speaker 4: of about ninety and he turns me. He says, links,
Speaker 4: this is why we stay out here. That's Sandy Tatum.
Speaker 4: That's playing golf with Sandy Tatum.
Speaker 1: He never quits, And in the late nineteen nineties, the
Speaker 1: man who never quits set out to save Harding Park.
Speaker 1: At first, Sandy Tatum made quick progress. He was well
Speaker 1: connected both in golf and politics, and soon he had
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour on board. Commissioner Tim Fincham agreed to
Speaker 1: hold a future event at the new Harding Park. Tatum
Speaker 1: also got San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown involved and started
Speaker 1: to make allies in the city's parks department. But ultimately
Speaker 1: it was the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that would
Speaker 1: have to approve the renovation, and the supervisors, along with
Speaker 1: their neighborhood constituencies, weren't exactly gung.
Speaker 3: Ho okay, so Shan Eilsborn. I am now San Francisco
Speaker 3: Mayor London Breachs chief of Staff, but at the time
Speaker 3: of the Harding Park renovation, I was a legislative aid
Speaker 3: to then Supervisor Tony Hall, and the district he represented
Speaker 3: is the district that included Harding Park. Of course, you
Speaker 3: had a lot of different constituencies out there. You had
Speaker 3: your old guard that liked the fact that they could
Speaker 3: pull up at seven point thirty, drop five bucks, play
Speaker 3: eighteen holes, have lunch, maybe drop another five bucks, play
Speaker 3: another eighteen holes, and they were the club and don't
Speaker 3: mess with what we got. It was their country club.
Speaker 3: That was a very loud constituency. And then you had
Speaker 3: the plenty of folks who would look at us and say,
Speaker 3: wait a second, We're going to invest tens of millions
Speaker 3: of dollars in that rich white men's sport when I've
Speaker 3: got swings in the Southeast sector that aren't rusty and
Speaker 3: falling apart.
Speaker 1: Shaan Alsburn's boss, Supervisor Tony Hall, basically agreed with those complaints,
Speaker 1: especially the ones from the Harding Park regulars.
Speaker 3: I mean, he had gotten elected in a very difficult
Speaker 3: race and Some of his biggest supporters were Harding Park
Speaker 3: Men's Club folks, and they were in his ear. That
Speaker 3: was really the only perspective that he had, and it
Speaker 3: got framed initially as privatization of the municipal course give
Speaker 3: away to the PGA, and that initial I remember well,
Speaker 3: that initial hearing was a late afternoon.
Speaker 7: And it was just bad.
Speaker 1: He's talking about a subcommittee meeting in spring two thousand
Speaker 1: and one when the Board of Supervisors first considered Sandy
Speaker 1: Tatum's proposal.
Speaker 3: It's a committee room, there's an elevated daist. Tony was
Speaker 3: a member of the committee three supervisors. But it was
Speaker 3: Tony's show, so they just let him run the healing
Speaker 3: and Tony Tony was not a quiet guy. If he
Speaker 3: had a problem, you knew it, and he liked to
Speaker 3: point out problems. And there was also an element of
Speaker 3: Tony as a bit of a showman, and Tony was
Speaker 3: playing to the crowd and Sandy came in in his
Speaker 3: beautiful suit. The koif Taire, the Stanford vocabulary, the Rhodes scholar, right,
Speaker 3: he was a Rhodes scholar. I think the Rhodes scholar
Speaker 3: vocabulary and the charm of an old world gentlemen versus
Speaker 3: these guys who were showing up in there. Ben Davies
Speaker 3: and their forty nine or war ra looked like they
Speaker 3: had all played earlier in the day and were looking
Speaker 3: to get out of the hearing to go play once more.
Speaker 3: And there were probably fifteen to twenty of that group
Speaker 3: who came and denounced Wrecking Park, who denounced Sandy, who
Speaker 3: denounced the PGA. This is our course, no privatization. Believe
Speaker 3: it as it is. And Sandy got up there by
Speaker 3: himself and tried to make a pitch. And you know,
Speaker 3: he and Tony really hadn't met yet. I don't think
Speaker 3: Tony had any real appreciation for who Sandy was and
Speaker 3: what he had done in his life. Tony was a
Speaker 3: bit abrupt cut him off, and Sandy did not win
Speaker 3: that room that day. But Sandy was, as always the
Speaker 3: perfect gentleman, and he didn't burn any bridges, he didn't
Speaker 3: take any personal lumbridge.
Speaker 4: And Sandy, aside from being probably the smartest man I
Speaker 4: ever met, he's also the most determined man I ever met.
Speaker 4: And he wasn't going to take no for an answer.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that was very important to
Speaker 4: him is that golf isn't just a game you play,
Speaker 4: it's a life you live, and the game will teach
Speaker 4: you things about yourself that if you learn those things
Speaker 4: and adapt those things to your daily life, you will
Speaker 4: become a better citizen. And that's where the idea emerged
Speaker 4: for the First Tea.
Speaker 1: The proposal became not only to renovate the golf course,
Speaker 1: but to establish a chapter of the First Tea at
Speaker 1: Harding Park. Now, back then, the First Tea was new
Speaker 1: on the scene of youth programming. The idea was to
Speaker 1: teach golf as well as values and to reach out
Speaker 1: to underrepresented communities.
Speaker 4: We're not building a golf course building a school. We
Speaker 4: have to change the culture. We have to change the world.
Speaker 4: And one of the ways we change is one young
Speaker 4: person at a time, and the First T can do that.
Speaker 4: It was central to the mission of Harding Park. Harding
Speaker 4: Park is central to the mission of the First T
Speaker 4: And so slowly and with increasing speed, the movement built.
Speaker 4: And one of the things Sandy asked me to help
Speaker 4: him with, and I wasn't the only one, mind you,
Speaker 4: was when there was going to be a meeting, he says,
Speaker 4: can you turn out the troops and what he really
Speaker 4: meant was, can you turn out folks so we'll get
Speaker 4: up to that microphone and say we need this. That
Speaker 4: coupled with the first tea and the people who would
Speaker 4: use that, you started to create something, not all at once,
Speaker 4: but with a momentum that built. Where do you want
Speaker 4: to be on the right side of history or the
Speaker 4: wrong side of history? And in San Francisco people slowly
Speaker 4: warmed up to the concept.
Speaker 3: And then, you know, I think we also caught a
Speaker 3: little fire. As much as Sandy was absolutely a big
Speaker 3: part of this, I think Harding Park also became a
Speaker 3: beneficiary of the early two thousands Tiger Woods phenomenon.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: I don't think we were the only course that benefited
Speaker 3: from him being all over the place. And yeah, Tony
Speaker 3: turned a little bit of a corner and saw what
Speaker 3: the benefits could be and then became a great champion
Speaker 3: of pushing it forward.
Speaker 4: The big question was who's paying for it? The board
Speaker 4: of supervisors didn't want to pay for it. I understand that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I like it. I understand that Sandy didn't
Speaker 4: like it. He understood it. So he set out to
Speaker 4: find some way to stitch together the financing and this
Speaker 4: Open Space Fund was there, and he had a liaison
Speaker 4: in the City Attorney's office who was keen on the
Speaker 4: idea that this could be a great use of this
Speaker 4: money that could have a lasting impact because of the
Speaker 4: first t program, and so they got the money component
Speaker 4: put together. What I haven't mentioned yet is when you
Speaker 4: have a venue like Hearting that can be a major
Speaker 4: draw for professional competition. It's the revenue it brings into
Speaker 4: the city. Look at the economic benefits, tourism, the exposure
Speaker 4: to have San Francisco flashing on television screens all over
Speaker 4: the world. That you don't have to buy that coverage,
Speaker 4: you get it for free. Now, Yes, it's a city asset.
Speaker 4: Yes there's an investment in keeping it up and restoring
Speaker 4: it and all that. But investments pay dividends. And that's
Speaker 4: how we got all these golfers, non golfers, hotel promoters,
Speaker 4: tourism operators, unions, everybody to get on board and say
Speaker 4: this project we want to get behind, we want to
Speaker 4: see this happen. Let's go and lo and behold. Sandy
Speaker 4: got his golf course.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and two. The Board of Supervisors unanimously
Speaker 1: approved the renovation plan, but plenty of San Franciscans were
Speaker 1: still unhappy.
Speaker 4: I'd say one of the trickiest components of the whole
Speaker 4: thing was dealing with the golfers at Harding Park because
Speaker 4: what they feared legitimately was the spike in greensvies. And
Speaker 4: I'd be less than candid if I didn't acknowledge there
Speaker 4: are people who are still upset about that.
Speaker 3: I don't think they ever got over it. I think
Speaker 3: they're I mean, frankly, what's it been fifteen almost twenty years.
Speaker 3: I'll still run into a couple of those folks, just say,
Speaker 3: on the neighborhood corn or whatever, and still get the
Speaker 3: dirty looks. People are still.
Speaker 1: Upset, whether they liked it or not. Though Harding Park
Speaker 1: was going to become something new.
Speaker 4: And the PGA Tour had a guy named Chris Gray
Speaker 4: who came in and made some subtle changes that were significant.
Speaker 4: But this is basically the same golf course with some
Speaker 4: a little bit of new bunkering and obviously new new
Speaker 4: green complexes, but where the old greens were and basically
Speaker 4: took what were great bones and put new skin on
Speaker 4: the frame, and you just came out with a golf
Speaker 4: course that we all knew when we watched it being
Speaker 4: reborn how great it was going to be. But you
Speaker 4: never know until you give it a test. You know
Speaker 4: you can build the best car. She got to turn
Speaker 4: the key and put it on the road and see
Speaker 4: how it handles. And that road test, that moment, that day,
Speaker 4: that time was two thousand and five when the AMX
Speaker 4: Championship came to San Francisco.
Speaker 5: The World Golf Championships, American Express Championship. Take the top
Speaker 5: fifty golfers in the world, let them in a fascinating
Speaker 5: city on a legendary public golf facility, Harding Park golf.
Speaker 4: Course, and nobody knew what was going to happen. Were
Speaker 4: they gonna shoot twenty under? Were they gonna shoot even par?
Speaker 4: Were they gonna laugh at the golf course? Would it
Speaker 4: be not up to snuff condition wise? Nobody knew, and
Speaker 4: we all know now what happened. You had what has
Speaker 4: to be one of the great competitions in the history
Speaker 4: of the PGA Tour. Tiger Woods and John Daly. You
Speaker 4: couldn't have had a greater contrast, a greater sense of excitement.
Speaker 8: It just needs to get it on the green.
Speaker 1: Would be old right at it it's gonna be Oh, it's.
Speaker 4: A great shot, a quick backspin.
Speaker 5: Nine o clowd goes not standing ovation.
Speaker 4: You know. One of the things that I said when
Speaker 4: we were getting ready for the last round, somebody asked
Speaker 4: me how I describe it, and I say, you're not
Speaker 4: going to measure this thing with a calculator. You'll measure
Speaker 4: it with a voltage meter. The roars, the excitement in
Speaker 4: the crowd. They loved Daily just as much as they
Speaker 4: loved Tiger. To have an end the way it did
Speaker 4: when he missed that little three footer on the third
Speaker 4: playoff hole.
Speaker 7: Was kind of sad, and Tiger Woods wins this American
Speaker 7: Express Championship.
Speaker 4: But it was a great competition and left incredible memories
Speaker 4: in everybody's head.
Speaker 1: Bo was in the press tent that week and he
Speaker 1: had a question for John Daily.
Speaker 4: And I said, Hey, John, what would you say if
Speaker 4: someone told you that when they played the Open at
Speaker 4: Olympic they parked cars at Harding Park. And he said,
Speaker 4: if he asked me, they ought to play the Open
Speaker 4: at Harden and park the cars at Olympic. And he
Speaker 4: just he loved Hearten and he, like everybody else, just
Speaker 4: couldn't believe what had happened, And when he learned that,
Speaker 4: he said, how did they turn this around so fast?
Speaker 4: Only two words? Sandy Tatum, So.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you hope out of the
Speaker 1: of the PGA Championship.
Speaker 4: Well, number one, I hope it's a dramatic finish, and
Speaker 4: number two, I hope we get a great champion. It's
Speaker 4: going to be another test to see what Harding Park produces,
Speaker 4: and my prediction is it will produce greatness as it all.
Speaker 1: So that's one possible way to end the story. But
Speaker 1: with city golf, things are never that simple. This is
Speaker 1: where I should lay my cards on the table. I
Speaker 1: lived in San Francisco for three years and I played
Speaker 1: my share of rounds at Harding Park or what's now
Speaker 1: known as TPC Harding Park. I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: great work of golf course design. Now I hear what
Speaker 1: bo Links and ron Kreutzchek are saying about the drama
Speaker 1: of the closing stretch on Lake Mercaid and the quality
Speaker 1: of champions. It's produced no arguments there, but I wish
Speaker 1: the course had more whole to whole variety, more interesting greens.
Speaker 1: I wish it were just more fun to play. I
Speaker 1: mean nine times out of ten, I'd rather go to
Speaker 1: the municipal courses at Lincoln Park or McLaren Park. But
Speaker 1: you know what, that's just my opinion. The fact that
Speaker 1: Harding Park has been popular for ninety five year speaks
Speaker 1: for itself. But the more important point is that golf
Speaker 1: courses are more than architecture, and few of them demonstrate
Speaker 1: that point more clearly than Harding Park.
Speaker 8: I've heard so many people try to knock what Harding isn't. Oh,
Speaker 8: it doesn't have all this amazing architecture, and the greens
Speaker 8: aren't that complex.
Speaker 2: They're very basic.
Speaker 8: It's not about the course itself or the architecture. It's
Speaker 8: about the sense of community that it has within the
Speaker 8: fabric of San Francisco, a world class city.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: My name is Joe Shasky, the third fifth generation San Franciscan,
Speaker 8: lifelong lover of sports here in the Bay Area. I
Speaker 8: host the show on ninety five to seven in the Game,
Speaker 8: but my dream round is me my grandfather who lives
Speaker 8: right down the street from me, My father, and my brother,
Speaker 8: and we play all over the city and the immediate
Speaker 8: Bay area every single weekend.
Speaker 1: Joe's Memories of Harding Park go back to his childhood.
Speaker 8: Like my dad would take this out there in the
Speaker 8: early evenings after baseball. My dad's a good golfer and
Speaker 8: we only had like a club or two, me and
Speaker 8: my brother, some sowd off clubs, and we would just
Speaker 8: hit the ball and he would say, hey, by the
Speaker 8: time I get to the green, your ball better beyond
Speaker 8: the green, like pick it up and run here or
Speaker 8: figure it out. And so that's what we grew up
Speaker 8: thinking Harding was.
Speaker 1: Today, Harding Park looks different, but in many important ways
Speaker 1: it's exactly the same.
Speaker 8: When I go out to Harding, I usually play the
Speaker 8: Fleming nine every Friday with my grandfather, and to me,
Speaker 8: it's one of the greatest places in the world because
Speaker 8: my eighty five year old grandfather can get around in
Speaker 8: an hour and a half. And if you're living a
Speaker 8: busy city life where you're coaching and your kids are
Speaker 8: going to school and you're working multiple jobs, it's hard
Speaker 8: to squeeze five six hours of golf into a normal
Speaker 8: work week. It's just it's really difficult. And that's where
Speaker 8: Harding comes into play. I take my nephews and my
Speaker 8: niece's out there. They're all part of the first Tea program.
Speaker 8: You get to see all kinds of the representation of golf.
Speaker 8: Which makes it so special for me is seeing all ages,
Speaker 8: all demographics, a financial backgrounds, and it just is a
Speaker 8: melting pot, just like the city of San Francisco is
Speaker 8: for golf.
Speaker 1: And yet, to say the least, not everyone in San
Speaker 1: Francisco feels the same way about city golf.
Speaker 9: I'm Sasha Perago, and I'm a housing justice advocate and
Speaker 9: a housing columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. Yeah, so, honestly,
Speaker 9: I'm pretty unfamiliar with Harding Park. I've never been to
Speaker 9: the park. It doesn't necessarily have a lot of emotional
Speaker 9: wheat because of that, and I think to some people
Speaker 9: who don't use golf courses sometimes when they do encounter them,
Speaker 9: it does feel a little bit exclusionary.
Speaker 1: Back in May, as golf courses in San Francisco were
Speaker 1: reopening in the midst of the COVID nineteen pandemic, Sasha
Speaker 1: Perago wrote an article titled keep SF Golf Courses closed.
Speaker 1: The subhead golf courses are an inefficient use of land
Speaker 1: and money that could be better used for housing.
Speaker 9: To me, I see my column more as raising questions
Speaker 9: for people less than specific policy proposals. So there were
Speaker 9: questions in that like should golf be managed by the
Speaker 9: city at all? Should golf exist in cities at all?
Speaker 9: I would not argue that golf should not exist in
Speaker 9: cities at all. My argument would be, do we necessarily
Speaker 9: need six city owned golf courses? Could the parks in
Speaker 9: rec department either redevelop one of those into a park that, like,
Speaker 9: more people in the city would use, or maybe even
Speaker 9: affordable housing tell me a little.
Speaker 1: Bit about the urgency of the affordable housing problem in
Speaker 1: San Francisco right now.
Speaker 9: So, from twenty ten to twenty eighteen, the city added
Speaker 9: two hundred thousand jobs total and just twenty four thousand
Speaker 9: new housing unit. And so a study by the Kaiser
Speaker 9: Marsten Associates estimates that eighteen two hundred and twenty nine
Speaker 9: units affordable to low wage households will need to be
Speaker 9: built between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty six in order
Speaker 9: to match the projected job growth for low wage workers.
Speaker 9: And so only nine hundred and seventy four units have
Speaker 9: been built so far, and so that's just five percent
Speaker 9: of the amount we need. So in the next six years,
Speaker 9: we need to build almost eighteen thousand units specifically of
Speaker 9: affordable subsidized housing to make sure the problem doesn't get worse.
Speaker 1: On top of that, when rent control departments change hands,
Speaker 1: landlords get to reset the rates, and the market rates
Speaker 1: in San Francisco right now, yeah, they're pretty high.
Speaker 9: To conclude, not only do we have a huge shortage,
Speaker 9: not only is the shortage getting worse, but we're actually
Speaker 9: in some cases in some neighborhoods losing affordable units faster
Speaker 9: than we're building them. And kind of like the reason
Speaker 9: that people target golf courses in specific for affordable housing is,
Speaker 9: first of all, obviously they take up a lot of
Speaker 9: land in the city. I was really surprised when doing
Speaker 9: like the back of the Napkin calculations for writing this
Speaker 9: column that when you include the private golf courses, my
Speaker 9: understanding is there's nine and private within the city limits,
Speaker 9: and that actually counts for five percent of the city's
Speaker 9: land mass, which I was really surprised by. So I
Speaker 9: think my question would be that is that too much?
Speaker 9: And also there's been a lot of coverage about how
Speaker 9: the cost of development in San Francisco is higher than
Speaker 9: anywhere else in the nation, and one of those costs
Speaker 9: is land and so when you're looking at city owned
Speaker 9: land already, you get to skip that cost, and therefore
Speaker 9: the cost of develop is lower, rents are lower. It
Speaker 9: might be more financially feasible for the city to develop
Speaker 9: affordable housing on that property.
Speaker 1: Obviously, this would all be more complicated to do than
Speaker 1: to say, golf course land would have to be rezoned
Speaker 1: for one thing, and then the city would somehow have
Speaker 1: to pay for it all.
Speaker 9: We just don't have the money to build. If we
Speaker 9: rezoned all the golf courses and said we were going
Speaker 9: to redevelop golf courses and made more space to build,
Speaker 9: we would need to do that in order to close
Speaker 9: the numbers that we have. But if we did that,
Speaker 9: we wouldn't be able to develop on them today anyways,
Speaker 9: because we don't have the money. If we took out
Speaker 9: Harding Park, we would not be able to build affordable
Speaker 9: housing on that right now.
Speaker 1: So the question is more about ideals. What kind of
Speaker 1: city should San Francisco be and should it devote as
Speaker 1: much space as it does to golf.
Speaker 9: There is a moral question of like how do we
Speaker 9: use what is the best way to use every space.
Speaker 2: I think it's ignorance talking about that.
Speaker 8: It's not a good use of the land because I
Speaker 8: think if you went out there and you actually watched
Speaker 8: what people were actually playing the game of golf at
Speaker 8: these different facilities community specifically, I don't think you would
Speaker 8: get the stuffy, rich white kind of stereotype that we're
Speaker 8: accustomed to.
Speaker 9: Maybe people see it as a little bit exclusionary because
Speaker 9: it's like, oh, this land isn't for me, this is
Speaker 9: land that like wealthy people use.
Speaker 8: I can't tell you how many people I've met from
Speaker 8: different walks of life, from lawyers to police officers to
Speaker 8: community activists, everybody going out there playing golf.
Speaker 2: It's the one thing that brings everyone together.
Speaker 9: I do think there's a lot of misconceptions, Like you're
Speaker 9: saying about who golfs. I think that people think of
Speaker 9: it as a very wealthy white person sport, and I'm
Speaker 9: hearing you say that that's not always true.
Speaker 2: African American, Asian American.
Speaker 8: You're gonna get old irishmen, you're gonna get old Italians,
Speaker 8: you're gonna get women, you're gonna get.
Speaker 2: Older senior citizens, young people.
Speaker 9: So from your perspective, do you think the number of
Speaker 9: city owned golf courses in San Francisco makes sense.
Speaker 8: You have all of these different areas and all the
Speaker 8: many different parks all throughout the city, so many different
Speaker 8: areas that aren't even being utilized by the youth or adults,
Speaker 8: or or people of any age.
Speaker 2: I feel like we're picking on.
Speaker 9: Golf, and so one thing is you could make that
Speaker 9: feel more accessible to people in this exclusionary And this is.
Speaker 2: Where I tell people.
Speaker 8: I challenge you to come out and just stay at
Speaker 8: the clubhouse, hang out at the first tea, hang out
Speaker 8: at the eighteenth hole, and just see.
Speaker 2: The people that are coming by.
Speaker 8: I guarantee you if you go out to Harding Park,
Speaker 8: you're going to see a group of golfers that does
Speaker 8: not represent the stereotype that so many people have in
Speaker 8: their minds.
Speaker 9: I think that a lot of people are under there's
Speaker 9: a lot of understandably, a lot of anger about class
Speaker 9: issues in San Francisco.
Speaker 8: There's the halves and then there's kind of like the
Speaker 8: have not, so there really isn't a middle class.
Speaker 9: I think disproportionately golfers are white and male, But I
Speaker 9: do think it just becomes an easy target of class anger.
Speaker 9: Class based anger.
Speaker 8: I grew up lower middle class and we didn't have
Speaker 8: a whole lot of outlets. We would just show up
Speaker 8: to the park and play ball, and that's what we had.
Speaker 8: Will they befunded all of those after school programs, and
Speaker 8: there really isn't a lot of things to do for
Speaker 8: people who can do stuff on a budget.
Speaker 9: I think sports and recreation are disproportionally used by wealthier
Speaker 9: white people. It's frustrating for me, and that's sad, and
Speaker 9: more people should have access to that because I think
Speaker 9: there is obviously a lot of very gent, instrainable health
Speaker 9: and happiness benefits to getting outside and participating in any
Speaker 9: sport whatever it is.
Speaker 8: None of my buddies so we got a lot of
Speaker 8: golfer friends that go all every single week and go
Speaker 8: somewhere around the city. None of them are country club guys,
Speaker 8: yet they all want to go out, bang the ball
Speaker 8: around for forty bucks and have a great three hours
Speaker 8: where they can decompress, you know, turn the cell phone off,
Speaker 8: and not think about the stresses of their normal life
Speaker 8: and their family and things like that.
Speaker 2: They just want to go out and have fun. That's
Speaker 2: the outlet that golf gives us all.
Speaker 9: I'm not against the Parts and Rex Department giving people
Speaker 9: affordable chances to golf. I think that's fantastic that we
Speaker 9: have to consider who in the city is not receiving
Speaker 9: any baseline services at all. And I do just think,
Speaker 9: you know, golf, the optics of golf are just particularly stark.
Speaker 4: So there is a valid discussion about equitable and proportional
Speaker 4: land use. I get it. But where you have to
Speaker 4: at least start the discussion in a community like San
Speaker 4: Francisco is with your existing physical plant. The golf courses
Speaker 4: are there. If we were starting from scratch, these courses
Speaker 4: probably wouldn't be built because people would find other things
Speaker 4: they want. But they were built and they are there,
Speaker 4: and the question is are we going to preserve them?
Speaker 4: Are we going to preserve our history? Are we going
Speaker 4: to preserve these things that have been so beneficial to us.
Speaker 4: It's an ongoing discussion. You have to just view it
Speaker 4: not just from an insular I'm a golfer. It's from
Speaker 4: a perspective of this is my community, what do I
Speaker 4: want it to look like? What do I want here?
Speaker 4: And if you had a community that didn't have any
Speaker 4: golf courses, that would be a pretty hollow community. To me,
Speaker 4: I probably wouldn't want to live there. Now maybe somebody
Speaker 4: else does, and so yeah, the market's going to choose.
Speaker 4: And to golfers who like their municipal golf courses, stand
Speaker 4: up for them, fight for them, because if you don't,
Speaker 4: they won't be there.
Speaker 1: This was the eighth episode of Frida Egg Stories. It
Speaker 1: was produced and hosted by me Garrett Morrison, with editing
Speaker 1: and engineering by Jay Verrick. Our executive producer is Andy Johnson.
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Ron Krouchik, Shawn Elsbern, Joe Shasky, Sasha Parago,
Speaker 1: and bow Linx. Bo by the Way is the author
Speaker 1: of several books, including the novel Follow the Wind and
Speaker 1: a collection of golf poems. Thanks for listening.